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The study — conducted by former Clinton administration economist Robert Shapiro — found that major public pension funds in Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Missouri invested between 3 and 5 percent of their assets in oil and gas stocks, but that the returns on those investments were between 9 and 12 percent. The stocks had "very, very strong returns" over the 2005 to 2009 period in the analysis, Shapiro told reporters in a conference call.

“The federal government by no stretch of the imagination subsidizes the oil industry,” said API chief economist John Felmy. “The oil industry subsidizes the federal government at a rate of $95 million a day."

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The tactic of spotlighting the role oil and gas stocks have in the financial welfare of rank-and-file Americans is not a new one. Shapiro in 2007 released a study indicating that executives and other senior industry officials and insiders owned 1.5 percent of U.S. oil and gas stocks with the remaining percentage owned by individual investors, mutual funds, pension funds and other types of common investments.

API and Shapiro this summer will release a broader analysis encompassing 17 states.

The four states highlighted in Monday’s "represent four fairly large states and so they were where we developed the methodology," Shapiro said. They also happen to be four key swing states in this presidential and congressional cycle.

The study — which looked at the annual reports of the pension plans — does not itemize whether the investments were with major or smaller and independent producers. The investments were with all oil and gas companies — including those foreign owned — that are traded on U.S. stock exchanges.

Shapiro was a Clinton-era undersecretary for economic affairs in the Commerce Department and a senior economic adviser to Al Gore and John Kerry in their presidential campaigns.

This article first appeared on POLITICO Pro at 4:50 p.m. on April 25, 2011.

So they want to pull tax incentives that keep engery prices low here in the US where these same people won't let us make our own energy and invest it instead in technologies that don't exist yet or aren't yet viable in the market....

Alright... time to stock up on candles and go back to subsistence farming as I know that I won't be keeping my job with a commuter bill that WILL reach 50% of my monthly budget...

The dollar just hit an all time low vs the euro. Perhaps Europe has a plan to stop wasteful spending. Obama certainly does not.

The G-20 have already laid their hand on the table. They told O-spends-a-lot that if he continues with his never-ending spending plan that he would turn the US into the next eastern block circa 1970... And we heard nary a whisper from our informed media about it... Occupied a grand total of 5 seconds before moving on to the next sycophantic puff piece.

The result: The Dollar is at a record low in comparison to the Euro... Gee... Wonder how that happened?

The average price for a gallon of unleaded gasoline hit $3.86 on April 25, more than $1-a-gallon higher than a year earlier and less than 25 cents away from the record high price of gasoline set in July 2008.

In fact, per gallon prices are more than $2 higher than when Obama took office Jan. 20, 2009. Yet the president has been nearly exempt from criticism on the issue of rising prices, despite a six-month drilling moratorium and more regulatory hurdles for industry.

The Business & Media Institute found that out of the 280 oil price stories the network evening shows have aired since the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill, only 1 percent (3 stories) mentioned Obama's drilling ban or other anti-oil actions in connection with gasoline prices.

Instead of asking whether Obama's anti-oil policies could be increasing the cost of gas, the networks blamed other factors such as Mideast turmoil or the "money game" played by speculators. Certainly, the turmoil in Libya, Egypt and surrounding nations has increased worries about oil production and can influence the price. But the networks also should have looked for explanations much closer to home, like Obama's many regulatory actions taken against the oil industry.

First there was the drilling ban, which was later overturned by federal courts as illegal. Seahawk Drilling, a Texas-based shallow-water drilling company cited that moratorium as the cause of its bankruptcy filing saying, they "have been adversely affected by the dramatic slowdown in the issuing of shallow-water permits in the U.S. Gulf of Mexico following the Macondo well blowout."

According to The Heritage Foundation, the Obama administration moved on to a de facto moratorium after the ban was overturned. Add to that the EPA's desire to regulate the industry's greenhouse gas emissions and new environmental regulatory hurdles for the Keystone XL pipeline, which would transport crude from Canada to the U.S. and create many American jobs.

Despite all of these actions on the part of the Obama administration, ABC, CBS and NBC evening news shows have barely mentioned them in stories about rising gas prices.

"""This is what you get with a Scum Sucking Socialist (aka dem) squatting in our White House!"""

Yes, we are being perpetually screwed by the oil and gas industries. Big surprise. The only way to stop the madness is to get out of the hummer and get on a bike, foot or hybrid at the very least. Our government is obviously impotent to deal with their corporate sponsors, so it is up to us. www.killingmother.blogspot.com.

Yes, we are being perpetually screwed by the oil and gas industries. Big surprise. The only way to stop the madness is to get out of the hummer and get on a bike, foot or hybrid at the very least. Our government is obviously impotent to deal with their corporate sponsors, so it is up to us.

I agree! Let's make being rich illegal....

That way... Everyone can be poor! Great Idea!!!!

Or....

We could make it to the company's benefit to be fair with us... But that's no good cause they will still be rich and the only people who should have that privelage should be our political masters...

After all.. It worked great for the soviets!

BTW - If one can afford a hummer... They should be FREE to drive a hummer... My only gripe is that the price of the gas they put in the thing should be market driven... Not tax and fee driven. The feds already have an enormous amount of influence in the market thanks to the trading being based on futures...

Gas prices go up and what do the feds do? They tell the buyers that we are going to further restrict supply by ADDING regulation and drilling bans... Then they try to blame the price increase that is a direct result on the oil companies themselves who have about one fourth the control over supply that the feds do...

Obama's regime block all oil exploration, are on the record as wanting gas to cost the same as Europe ($8-9 a gallon), have a moratorium on getting oil from wells that could be producing in a matter of months.

Obama's regime block all oil exploration, are on the record as wanting gas to cost the same as Europe ($8-9 a gallon), have a moratorium on getting oil from wells that could be producing in a matter of months.

Why should the energy companies drill here, drill now (more)? They're doing perfectly well as they are. Pull your boot off their necks. They've got the best government regulatory structure they can buy, it's a free market after all. But, the socialists want to force the profitable companies to sift through sand and drill every possible small field just in case the geologists got the analysis wrong.

Yes, we are being perpetually screwed by the oil and gas industries. Big surprise. The only way to stop the madness is to get out of the hummer and get on a bike, foot or hybrid at the very least. Our government is obviously impotent to deal with their corporate sponsors, so it is up to us.

Here is a prime example of our so called educated class, a product, I would say of our supposed institutes of higher education, I guess we can all sleep well tonight knowing full well that our future rests well in the hands of someone that tells us to get out of the Hummer, and get on a bike, foot, or hybrid at the very least.

Hey Genius! Go to a nearby construction site, and inform the contractor that got the account to haul his equipment in by hybrid vehicles, instead of half, three quarter, or one ton trucks or vans, go to the local grocerer, and inform him that the products that are transported in should not be brought in by semi's or larger stepside delivery vehicles, , , get where I'm going with this?

You obviously have not a clue how the world, -or- I would even go as far to say how your local community works and operates, I'm willing to go so far out on a limb as to say your probably still in school, don't have a family to support, i.e. keeping a roof over their heads, keeping food on the table, utilities, and so on,,

Go back to your dream-world, study for your next test, and by the way,? what kind of hypocrite are you anyway to be wasting energy having your computer on to post here? not to mention, that if it were not for oil by-products, that you would not even have a computer to make your idiocy known?

I've been waiting for WEEKS on one of you brilliant oxygen thieves on the left to explain how the hell taxing or removing subsidies for oil companies will make fuel less expensive. So far, every time I ask I experience the typical silence (which speaks VOLUMES) from you. You people, and your leaders especially, need to come out of the greenie/commie closet and admit you either WANT the higher prices, or logically explain how more taxes and less subsidies for oil companies will make for cheaper fuel.

Ok, drill clowns. Little lesson for you. All of the available oil in US territory would add maybe 5-10% to the global supply. That would take another 10-15 years to come online. By then, use will increase by that amount anyway. And just so you know, just because oil is drilled with a US permit, doesn't mean that oil is sold to the US market at a discount. Just a liberal who invests in commodities.

I'm a free market liberal. As in, I don't believe oil and gas companies require government welfare. I've never needed help to run my business, and it's nowhere near as profitable. I don't even own a car. What's the cost of securing a steady flow of cheap oil from Saudi Arabia, plus gas guzzling cars, plus tax breaks? I'm guessing it's a couple bucks a gallon. Why is it that the GOP socialists always want to distort the free market?

What Obama didn't tell you is that he expanded wind and solar subsidy's.... 80%

That his budget decreased subsidy's to oil by 30%

If your outraged that Exxon isn’t paying taxes in the U.S., don’t worry, it is. Forbes reports that they were only focused on income taxes, but it’s worth noting that their records show $7.7 billion in other taxes in the U.S.

It's IMPORTANT for Obama to find a scapegoat for his lack of energy policy.

... boy , I listened to all these arguments last time gas was $4.69 a gal ( in Calif).

Here we are again. The answer is not more oil - the answer is a diff. energy source, a new way. Yet we do not get it and the 'hint' started in the '70's . Yet we do the same thing and expect different results.